On rare occasions there seems to be a supernatural synergy unveiled between the challenges of the past and the unknowns of the future, specially coincident in the present. Those moments in the past convinced me that I am (or was) moving in a right direction for me.
I haven’t had one of those in a long time. Not that I’m having one now, but I think I may be close.
It’s good to see MITers do something with their lives. Lori Berenson ’91 has long been a role-model, but she never achieved the same notoriety as Aafia Siddiqui ’94, one of the current top seven threats to the US.
I’ve always been pretty pro-terrorist. But my recent read of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? has jostled me further that way.
I have a philosopher friend who firmly believes that, if a train is careening out of control at four deaf, blind frolickers, and if you have the opportunity to switch the track so that the train collides with only two, you should not, because to do so would be to participate in an unethical action.
I cannot agree, and now I know how. As engineers, we wield enormous power, which we can use, or which will loose itself into the systematic frameworks in which we participate. If the latter happens, it will never make people happier. Better to grasp that power and learn to use it well.
“Go and do your task, even though you know it’s wrong…. You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity.” (Wilber Mercer, Do Androids…?)
It’s tough to tear one’s eyes from the world, which appears to have accelerated its frantic move toward hell (climate change, oil shortages, ID barrages, and an imminent draft). With Claudia away (2 weeks), my solution is to bury myself in work and reading.
I recently put together a syllabus for a course in Human Systems Dynamics, and I’m looking for feedback or additional pointers. Read the PDF and reply! A syllabus for an Artificial Intelligence Workshop is on the way.
Like one LJ friend, I recently started my first Philip K. Dick (Do Androids…?). The first few days I tried to read single chapters only between studying my other two current books: a pre-mammoths-and-angels version of The Way Things Work (I’ve been curious), and my Handbook of Hypnotic Suggestions and Metaphors (with which it looks like I’ll be able to do about anything). Damn SciFi for being so much more engaging than the books I should be reading. I should be done by tomorrow.
I have to learn to write more journal entries when life is full, rather than less. I had hoped I wouldn’t be so busy now… but therein lies my story.
The semester is over, after some long days of grading (I need to start asking less of my students!). Lest I catch up on sleep, I got a swell research position in the robotics lab at Olin for the summer. I go there four day a week, and arriving by 10:00 means leaving Cambridge shortly after 8. I leave Olin at 5 and return to Cambridge around 6:30. That’s 28 hours a week of work, and not nearly enough for me to feel good about what I’m giving to the lab.
But according to Claudia, that’s already 42 hours per week, and she’s not pleased. Claudia needs people, and as long as I’m her boyfriend, that’s supposed to mean that she can get me. She accepted it during the school year, but it’s the summer now, and she thought that things would change.
I explained to her: Yes– I’m a work-a-holic! I enjoy working! Sure, I enjoy smelling roses too; I think I have an hour on Tuesday for that.
I started the conversation that ballooned into this to ask if there was a way that I could get more than 5 hours of sleep a night (I got to sleep when Claudia does, and get up four hours before her). Ultimately we decided that there wasn’t.
As an aftershock of Moulin Rouge, I began trying to write love songs on Friday. Naturally, I started by programming an A.I.-esque song-maker system (“My gift is my code, and…”), encoding rules from a Harmony and Voice Leading book. Claudia seemed unsettled by my approach (she called it wrong but I couldn’t understand her reasons why).
I also have some questionably healthy limerence for the Satine character in the movie– I think my first since relating to Claudia. People who I mention this to seem to think that I would be interested in information about some ‘Nicole Kidman’ fellow, but the interest doesn’t seem to translate.
This also forms my first attempt at writing in e-prime. I hear it gets easier in time.
My recent obsession is Moulin Rouge. I’ve decided that I definitely want beautiful fictional women in my head trying to influence me… and no sooner did I decide it than I realized that it was already true.
This week was Olin’s “Exposition” (motto: “Everybody expects the Olin Exposition”, a pun off of “Nobody expects the Olin Imposition”, the motto for another event which no one outside of Olin can understand anyway): three days of students showing off their various projects from the semester. From about 150 students, we got around 120 posters (with associated projects and demonstrations), 20 presentations (one on 15th century Italian garb), and 5 theatrical performances. For one of my classes, we asked for some presentation spots that we decided we didn’t want, but by then it was too late to take them off of the schedule. So I sent email to three students asking if they could put something together on their individual projects, the day before the presentations. The result: 4 presentations, all beautifully done. Olin students are scary.
I am currently composing an Artificial Intelligence Workshop class for Olin. It will be exciting, as soon as I figure out why other A.I. classes spend so much time on search algorithms. I think it’s from some mistaken wish to justify A.I. by systematically sneaking up on intelligence. Perhaps they will give us more grants if we talk about graphs, optimal paths, and informed algorithms than if we let slip any talk of Truth, Beauty, Freedom, or Love.
Classes are over, and the work of summer begins. After the grading that is.
I need to quickly create a class to teach next semester, if Olin will let me teach a class at all. My best idea has been a class in Human Systems Dynamics, with reading, experiments, modelling, and analysis (In fun, I’d subtitle it “Human Modelling and Control”, the root of which is the name of another Olin class that many students take). The only problem is that as soon as I started talking about it, I found out that a group of four professors was already considering collaborating to create such a class for the Spring. My other best ideas are classes or seminars in “Philosophy of Engineering”, “Artificial Intelligence Workshop”, “Technologies and Cultures” (off MIT’s ISP), “Experiments in Education”, and “Medieval Immersion” (like St. John’s/Waldorf schools).
My other goals for the summer include exporting my contributions to alternative methods of grading, packaging up my notes for the Signals and Systems lab I taught for future instructors, and working on a snake robot.
I got back from the march in DC Monday morning and I’m still skidding. I usually use weekends to catch up on sleep, but I lost Friday and Monday night to 10 hour bus drives. This the second time I’ve been to DC. I saw much more of the city this time, and much less of its things.
A curious effect. Our little group for the march (mostly of Claudia’s friends and family) was much more extraverted than I’m used to, but it became clear that their idea of their relation to the march was more inward-directed than mine. On several occasions I was told I was being insufficiently social when I thought I was participating in the march; had I a camera and inclination to use it, it would have been for pictures of the crowds, signs, antics, and scenery, but every use they had for their cameras included some subset of our group in formal composition.
On another note, I’m participating in an “Awareness Seminar” run by my favorite MIT philosopher, Lee Perlman. Past exercises for the group have concentrated on awareness of bodily emotions, social pressures, and subconscious knowledge, and practice in truth-telling and meditation. This week is on compassion, and the week’s exercise is being distributed in pieces. The first piece write up an all-out condemnation of someone we dislike: a complete catalog of everything we find distasteful in that person. Furthermore, “If you have fooled yourself into thinking that you are incapable of disgust, disdain, or hatred, then just focus on someone you tend to get pissed off at or really annoyed with a lot.”
I don’t believe myself to be incapable of hating someone… but I can only come up with one person who approaches the latter category– and she’s also the person I most love.
I’m glad there are people who are more time-conscious than I am; Olin might have careened off the end of the semester before I noticed, if it weren’t for a stray comment today.
Last week I convinced my co-teachers to let the students in our classes do their own thing, and now I’m paying the consequences. But I’m pleased. It’s wonderful to see my students come up with actually new, creative ideas, and I’ll give my time to allow that any day.
One point of interest: In one class we required that they come up with their own alternative before choosing between it and the prescribed labs; in the other, we simply encouraged them to find their own path, but offered the “class plan” to anyone who wanted it. In the former class, nearly half of the students have decided to do their own thing (and over 90% of those who came up with truly considered alternative); in the latter, there’s been hardly a peep.
In other news, last night I successfully hypnotized my third person, which brings my success rate over 50% again.
Olin’s semester is nearing done, so I have more to do, but things are a lot clearer, so I feel like I have more free time. Two thoughts:
Milton Erickson is a genius. My Voice will Go with You is meme central. It’s a collection of stories designed to be told to therapists to make them better therapists, and for them to tell to patients to make them better people. That is, every story has a layer for each of the conscious and unconscious minds of each of the therapist and her future patients. Erickson thought that the most powerful stories were the ones you forgot. (Since my last writing I’ve gotten deep into hypnosis.)
I’m also reconsidering my intentions for LiveJournal. I want to start using it as a means of communication. Be Here Now says that at every moment we are a complete statement of our whole selves. To know myself as a being in time (my original goal for my Journal), it may be enough to know what I want to say, and to have a forum of friends for saying those truths, or loves, or fears, uncensored. I want my LiveJournal to be that.